🃏 How to create a Speaking Cards activity

The Speaking Cards template is an interactive prompt and flashcard game designed to facilitate speaking practice, discussion, and oral language development. It presents a talking point, question, or multimedia cue on a series of dynamic cards, helping students build conversational fluency, practice target vocabulary, and develop public speaking confidence.

In this article:

• How is the Speaking Cards activity played?

• How and what do you type into Edit content for Speaking Cards?

• Where can I find some more examples?

---

How the activity is played

The game displays a stylised deck of prompt cards that can be dealt, flipped, or shuffled.

• The prompt: An item, question statement, text scenario, or uploaded image asset appears on the card face to present a topic or talking point to the student.

• The interaction: Students tap or click on the deck stack to deal a new card, or trigger specific template movements to cycle through the conversation cues.

• The challenge: Because the cards hide the upcoming prompts, students must think on their feet, practice spontaneous speech production, and rely on their real-time language construction skills.

• Completion: Once a card's prompt has been spoken to or discussed, the user deals the next item. At the end, users can view their total session time, review their deck completion rate, and add their names to the Leader board.

  

---

Creating your Speaking Cards activity

1. Click Create Activity and choose Speaking Cards.

   
    

2. Add your content:

   • Target item: Enter the exact discussion question, vocabulary prompt, or conversation starter you want the students to answer (e.g., "Describe your favourite childhood holiday").

   • Image/Audio (Optional): Click the image icon to upload a visual talking point, or link an audio recording to model correct pronunciation or listening comprehension cues.

3. Click Add an item or press Enter to build out the next speaking card prompt in your lesson list.

4. Click Done. Wordwall will compile your card entries and prepare the interactive deck structure for launch.

   
    

5. Scroll down to Visuals style to add a creative style to your activity, or tailor the difficulty in the Options panel below the activity:

   

   • Timer

     • None: No time limit is enforced, giving students an untimed setting to process conversation prompts and speak at their own pace.
     • Count up: Displays an ascending stopwatch that tracks exactly how long a student or group takes to complete the entire deck.
     • Count down: Sets a strict time limit (e.g., 5 minutes). The activity ends automatically if the countdown clock runs out before the session wraps up.
   • Number of deal places
     • Adjust the slider to determine how many card-dealing slots are active on the board layout simultaneously. In the screenshot, this is set to 1, meaning cards are dealt out one single prompt at a time.
   • Random
     • Shuffle item order: When checked, the deck order is mixed and scrambled every time the game is loaded, ensuring that cards are drawn in a completely unpredictable sequence rather than following the order in the editor.
   • Saving options
     • Apply to this activity: Saves these specific layout configurations only for the active board file you are actively editing.
     • More: Click this drop-down to find:
       • Set as default for template: Remembers these visual style and deal preferences as your standard template layout for all future activities you build using Speaking cards.
       • Revert to default: Clears your recent changes and restores the options back to your previously saved personal defaults.
       • Revert to author's setting: Restores the card parameters back to the original layout configured by the initial community creator.

---

Creating Speaking Cards with AI

You don't need to be a prompt expert to use our AI. It is designed to be intuitive and accessible directly from the activity creator.

1. Click Create Activity and select Speaking Cards.

   
    

2. Look for the ✨ Generate with AI button at the top right of the content table.

   
    

3. Enter your content:

   • Topic: Type a subject like "Icebreaker Questions for Upper-Intermediate ESL" or "Debate Prompts on Renewable Energy."

   • Text / Notes: Paste an article, situational text, or speaking target notes. The AI will isolate key topics, abstract themes, or discussion concepts and format them into distinct conversation starters.

   • File: Upload a PDF or Word doc. Wordwall AI will analyse the document text and instantly compile a full deck of core contextual question cards directly aligned with your study material.

4. Click Generate. Review the conversation prompts, refine any individual card text or phrasing if necessary, and hit Done.

   

---

Need inspiration?

Some examples of Speaking Cards activities have been created by our users and shared with the Wordwall resource community.